A Journey…long before we knew it (Part 2)

(Continuing the story of how Israel came into our life)

So after all the joy and excitement of learning how God changed my husband heart we got pregnant right away! I was overjoyed! I went into my doctors office for a confirmation of the “facts” and she told me that yes indeed I was pregnant! HOORAY! We were trying to figure out how to tell everyone. I love surprises and I love surprising people. Plus no one knew we were trying for another child so this was going to be a great surprise no matter what! We had only known we were pregnant for a few days before we received devastating news…I was miscarrying…*ouch* my heart hurt! I wept as my heart longed for this child. I had to trust that God knew what He was doing, even though I couldn’t make any sense of it! My husband and I both grieved. However I am so thankful for our relationship that we could lean upon one another for strength as well as upon the Lord.

A bit of time passed, and we once again were overjoyed with the news that I was pregnant again! We started scheming of how we would tell our family and friends. I made shirts for Rachel and Jaxon that read “Big Sister” and "Big Brother” We presented the shirts to them…and it took them a while. Rachel is all ready a big sister so she didn’t get the “news” at first. Then she read Jaxon’s shirt and was confused. We then shared with them that there was a baby in Mommy’s tummy. They were beyond excited. It was a beautiful surprise. We told our friends and family by showing them Rachel & Jaxon’s shirts as well. Everyone was so genuinely excited for us and it was a fun time.

The pregnancy progressed with no problems. I always said I was made to be pregnant because I love it! My body handles it wonderfully. I never get sick, in fact I forget I am even pregnant for the first few months before I am showing because I don’t have any of the “usual” pregnancy signs. It's wonderful!

I love knowing what I am going to name my children WAY in advance! I can’t stand not knowing, I just have to know what their name will be! I started reading through baby name books. We found a few girls names right away that we loved, so no problem there. But a boy’s name…oh that was terrible! I didn’t like any of them! I mean some of them were “ok” but nothing that stood out to us. I was having such a hard time with this. Jon mentioned that maybe we should pray about it. Oh…what a good idea…I hadn’t thought of that yet. So we prayed, separately. One morning I woke up and felt a name was placed on my heart. But the name wasn’t a “normal” name…Jon likes the more simple traditional names and this name was not one of those. Oh boy I thought…not so sure Jon’s going to go for this one. So when Jon came home I asked him if he had been praying about a name. He said yes and that he felt like God had given him a name today. Ok, lets hear it I thought. He responded with the name Israel. *WHAT!* No way! That was the exact name that God had placed on my heart that morning. I couldn’t believe it! It was very exciting and we felt so good about it. We never felt like a girls name was given to us there were just ones we liked. Keep in mind, we didn’t yet know whether we were having a boy or a girl yet. Although…I think this was God’s way of telling us it was a boy.

His middle name we had decided on long ago. We like for our children's middle name to be after someone significant in their life (Rachel Anne - Anne is my middle name. Jaxon Jon - Jon is obviously my husbands name). David is one of Jon's brother's names. It was his closest brother in age and one of his closest brothers growing up. David is also part of Jon's "Life Change" name. (This is a long story for those of you who don't know what Life Change is, but basically God gave Jon this name in addition to the name his parents gave him. That's the super condensed version. Maybe I will blog about it some day). Anyway, David has a wonderful meaning (Beloved, Lover of all, A man after God's own heart). So thus the name Israel David was born :-)

***More to come in part 3***